Speakers

Billie Joe Armstrong
Billie Joe Armstrong is an American rock musician and occasional actor, best-known as the lead vocalist, main songwriter and lead guitarist for the American punk rock band Green Day. He is also a guitarist and vocalist for the punk rock band Pinhead Gunpowder and provides lead vocals for garage rock band Foxboro Hot Tubs when not working with Green Day.

Raised in Rodeo, California, Armstrong developed an interest in music at a young age, and recorded his first song at the age of five. He met Mike Dirnt while attending elementary school, and the two instantly bonded over their mutual interest in music, forming the band Sweet Children when the two were fifteen years old. The band changed its name to Green Day, and became one of the most successful rock groups of all time. Armstrong has also pursued musical projects outside of Green Day's work, including numerous collaborations with other musicians as well as serving as the primary vocalist for the bands Pinhead Gunpowder and Foxboro Hot Tubs.

Lucie Arnaz
Lucie Arnaz began her career on the TV shows "The Lucy Show" and "Here’s Lucy," appearing with her legendary mother, Lucille Ball. She won an Emmy Award as the executive producer of the documentary film Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie. As a stage actress she has appeared on Broadway, where her credits include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Lost in Yonkers and They're Playing our Song, as well as in Chicago and London's West End.

Adam Carolla
Adam Carolla is a comedian and the host and creator of "Loveline," "The Man Show" and "Crank Yankers" and author of In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks … And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy.

Rosanne Cash
Roseanne Cash joined "The Johnny Cash Show" at 18, further absorbing her father's influence and that of the show's touring partners, Carl Perkins and the Carter Family. She studied drama at Vanderbilt University and at the Lee Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles before focusing on music. Over the past 30 years she has released 12 albums, including Right or Wrong (1979), Seven Year Ache (1981), Rhythm and Romance (1985), Interiors (1990), Black Cadillac (2006) and The List (2009). She has recorded 11 number-one singles, blurring the genres of country, rock, roots and pop. She is author of Penelope Jane: A Fairytale (2000); Bodies of Water (2005), a collection of stories; and the memoir Composed (2010).

Her essays and fiction have appeared in various collections and publications, including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Time, The Oxford American and New York Magazine.

Will Dana
Will Dana is managing editor of Rolling Stone and editorial director of Men's Journal.

Angie Dickinson
Angie Dickinson is an actress who proved strong women have a place on the small screen and the American workplace when she stepped into the iconic role of Pepper Anderson, an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department, in the groundbreaking show "Police Woman." In the course of her career, Dickinson won a Golden Globe for her work on “Police Woman,” and she racked up several Emmy®
Award nominations.

Robert Duvall
Robert Duvall began his career with To Kill a Mockingbird, and has been known for iconic performances ever since in The Godfather (I and II), The Great Santini, Apocalypse Now, Tender Mercies, The Apostle (which he also directed), Lonesome Dove and countless other films.

Linda Evans
Linda Evans is an actress who got her big break co-starring with the legendary Barbara Stanwyck in the '60s hit western "The Big Valley" in the role of Audra Barkley. But Evans may be best known for her role as long-suffering heroine Krystal Carrington on the hit television series "Dynasty," working opposite co-star Joan Collins as on-screen rivals. Evans has been nominated for numerous awards in her career, including an Emmy.

James Franco
Acclaimed for his work last year in 127 Hours, James Franco is one of our busiest actors, whose past performances include James Dean (Golden Globe winner), Spider-Man, Milk (Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor), Pineapple Express (Golden Globe nomination), City by the Sea, Flyboys, In the Valley of Elah and Eat Pray Love.

Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1996. He is the author of the Times best-sellers "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference," "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking," "Outliers: The Story of Success," and "What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures."

Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik has been writing for The New Yorker since 1986. His most recent book is "The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food."

Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens is an author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2008.

A.M. Homes
A.M. Homes is a novelist, short story author and screenwriter. Best known for the novel The End of Alice and the collections The Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know.

Annette Insdorf
Annette Insdorf is the director of undergraduate film studies at Columbia University.

Michael Mayer
Michael Mayer (born June 27, 1960) is an American stage and film director. He won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 2007 for directing Spring Awakening.

Nichelle Nichols
Nichelle Nichols' most famous role is that of communications officer Lieutenant Uhura in "Star Trek," which she starred in until the series ended in 1969. Following the end of the original series, Nichols
assisted NASA in recruiting females and minorities, including the first American female astronaut, Sally Ride. She is also a skilled songstress and dancer who toured with the Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton bands.

Stefanie Powers
Stefanie Powers is best known as the star of ABC's hit "Hart to Hart." In addition to her international fame as Jennifer Hart, Powers was also the star of such TV series as "The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.," "The Feather and Father Gang" and "Maggie." She is also president of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, director
of the Mount Kenya Game Ranch, spokesperson for AVID Microchip Technology, and works with both the Cincinnati Zoo and Zoo Atlanta. Powers finished in the off-Broadway play Applause! and was signed to be hostess of the new cable channel Romance Classics. She has also worked on a series of PBS shows teaching women about finance called "Funding Your Dreams." Her latest movie project, Someone Is Watching, is in limited television release in Europe and the United States.

Rex Reed
Rex Reed is the former co-host of the TV show "At the Movies." He currently writes in the column "On the Town with Rex Reed" for The New York Observer.

Jordan Roth
Jordan Roth is the President of Jujamcyn Theaters which owns and operates five Broadway theaters. Current and recent productions include American Idiot, The Book of Mormon, Elf, Fela!, The House of Blue Leaves, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Jersey Boys. He hosts a popular interview series at the venerable 92nd Street Y, facilitating insightful and revealing one-on-one discussions with the most celebrated actors on the Broadway stage. Recent guests include Nathan Lane, Sean Hayes, Laura Linney, Liev Shreiber, Billie Joe Armstrong, David Hyde Pierce, Patti LuPone and Elaine Stritch. He created Givenik.com, where theatergoers can purchase discounted tickets and give 5% of their ticket price to the charity of their choice. Jordan serves on the boards of The Broadway League, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, The Times Square Alliance and Freedom to Marry. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with degrees in philosophy and theater and received his MBA at Columbia Business School.

Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie is the author of eleven novels, including "The Moor’s Last Sigh," "The Enchantress of Florence," and "Midnight’s Children," which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the Best of the Booker Award and has just been adapted for film. "Joseph Anton," his memoir about his years of struggle against the Iranian fatwa on his novel "The Satanic Verses," comes out in September. He has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1987.

Alison Stewart
Alison Stewart is an American radio and television journalist. She was one of the hosts of the Bryant Park Project, a morning drive news program from NPR. Stewart first gained widespread visibility as a political correspondent for MTV News in the 1990s.

Share This series

About this series

Warm, witty, wild and wildly entertaining, 92Y’s lectures feature an irresistible mix of world-renowned celebrities, artists and authors. These candid conversations—including Lucie Arnaz, James Franco, Angie Dickinson and Christopher Hitchens—offer a revealing look into the lives of some of the most intriguing personalities of our time.

About 92nd Street Y

92nd Street Y’s unique fusion of community and culture makes it the only place of its kind in the world. 92Y is a nonprofit community center, performance stage and lecture hall; a literary salon and home for artists; a school, outreach organization and summer camp; a gym, a residence and more. 92nd Street Y, a proudly Jewish institution since its inception in 1874, has become a community of communities, welcoming people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds. Now serving more than 300,000 people each year in its New York facilities, 92Y also reaches millions of “virtual” guests around the world through its website, satellite broadcasts and other electronic media. Committed to making its programs available to everyone, 92nd Street Y awards nearly $1 million in scholarships annually and reaches about 7500 public school children through subsidized arts and science education programs. For more information, please visit www.92Y.org.